Note: Two more accounts of the visit may be found in ‘AN ENORMOUS YES In Memoriam Philip Larkin (1922-1985)’, edited by Harry Chambers, Peterloo Poets, 1986 and ‘LARKIN AT SIXTY’, edited by Anthony Thwaite, Faber and Faber 1982 respectively

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I love it when my rss follow pops another Selzer nugget in the inbox!
This one I particularly enjoyed – both because of the writing and because it prompted me to pick and read a couple of the good librarian’s works!

Clive Watkins

June 29, 2011

I seem to remember, David, though from a very long time ago indeed, this story of your dropping in on Larkin, but perhaps I am mistaken. Who was your companion, I wonder, and what poem was it served as “a calling card / or warning”? – Clive

You remember correctly, Clive. My companion was Harry Chambers and the poem was ‘Excuses To The Empress,’ which I’ve copied below for curiosity’s sake. It was written in 1963 and published in NATIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF STUDENT POETRY (U.L.I.E.S.A 1964).

EXCUSES TO THE EMPRESS
(For Harry Chambers)

‘A Wallflower Regrets’ – my memoirs, madam.
A prop to any wall at party, dance,
Sports field, and battlefield no doubt. A dreamer
Due I’m told for no good end; a sceptic
Begging shrilly for someone’s shoe toe.
Regrets, not that I fail to beat the hearties
By their own rules – nothing so pure, just chagrin
That I get by art what some it seems
Achieve through instinct. A few blank verse lines
Will so neatly pose, conclude the verbal
Problems of ‘Death’, ‘Ideals’ and ‘Love’ – always
Veridical, always removed from action.
But even shufflers at a dance create
Order by doing. Till the music ends
Their movement copes quite well. One would be glad
To Astaire it down the boulevard,
Not know the Emperor had it built that wide
To shoot with ease a rioting populace.

Some Freudian maxim was ignored to make
Collecting books more valuable than gleaning
R.S.V.P. cards or plucking girls.
At school I learned your hurdles must remain
Upright. To dancing-class I went for sex
And company, achieved a few close holds,
Exchanged some clichés. In childhood my father
Died at war. Perhaps a death that might
Befit a dancing man would have appeased
The lack of father’s hands, the aching gaucheness,
More than demise from chronic sinusitis,
Or the burial with a wooden cross
That still has the wrong initial on it.
But I am mawkish madam. No doubt
You would concede there is no proper way
To lose a father. At a party’s close,
I think sometimes, I ought to fling my host’s
Prize pewter tankard in his hearth and talking
Wildly shuffle to the street. Instead
Am thankful my father died with irony.
No thanks, I shall not function at your party.

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NOTICE – I, DAVID JOHN BERNARD SELZER, hereby assert and give notice of my right under section 77 of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patented Act 1988 to be identified as the author of all works presented within this website.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS – Some of the poems on the website have appeared, in one form or another, in the following: A Jar Of Sticklebacks, Anglo-Welsh Review, Jabberwocky, Life Lines, Peterloo Anthology, Poetry in the Seventies, Poetry Matters. Poetry Merseyside, Meridian, Still Life, The Honest Ulsterman and the Times Literary Supplement. Some have been broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside. HERRINGS was performed at Action Transport Theatre in 2005.